Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Olivier Psaume, Head of Investor Relations at Sopra Steria. And on behalf of all of Sopra Steria's teams, I'd like to welcome you to this Capital Markets Day that we're organizing for you this morning. So we're delighted to welcome you to our offices in Paris. We've got sell-side and buy-side analysts with us this morning who cover Sopra Steria, as well as market analysts. We're also delighted to welcome many investors and stakeholders who are connected remotely. So this meeting is webcasted live, and a recording will be available and online as of the start of this afternoon. The meeting will take place in French, and it will be interpreted into English. During the Q&A session, people present here in the room can ask their questions in French or in English, and answers will be provided in French and interpreted simultaneously.
So the goal of the day is to talk about Sopra Steria's strategy and its targets for 2028. Today, we're not going to be providing guidance for 2025. We will do that at the end of February next year, in accordance with our regular practices. So the agenda for the morning is as follows. Shortly, Cyril Malargé, CEO, will talk about Sopra Steria's strategy from 2025 to 2028. Then, Dominique Lapère, Head of Operations, will talk about the major lines of transformation which are underway. Fabrice Asvazadourian, Group Consulting CEO, will then take the floor to talk about our strategy and our goals for consulting. After Fabrice, we'll have a short break, 10-15 minutes, no more. Then we'll reconvene with Mohammed Sijelmassi, Group CTO, who will talk about our technology approach as a transformation lever for our customers.
Then we'll continue with Axelle Lemaire, Head of Sustainable Development at Sopra Steria. So we'll be talking about sustainable performance. Then Étienne du Vignaux, Group CFO, will talk about the group's capital allocation policy and targets for 2028. Then Cyril Malargé will conclude, and then we'll have a Q&A session of about 45 minutes. The event will finish at around midday. So it's now time to launch the Capital Markets Day, and I hand the floor to Cyril Malargé, Group CEO.
So thank you, Olivier, for this introduction. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here in person and being connected remotely. I'm delighted to welcome you to our offices. You're here in Sopra Steria's offices in Paris, and we're delighted to welcome you here for this Capital Markets Day. I'd like to suggest we get started right away with a presentation. We'll have a look at the company profile. We are a digital services company, a European leader in technology with EUR 5.8 billion of revenue in 2023, over 52,000 employees, presence or operations in nearly 30 countries. If we look at the geographical distribution of our revenue, 47% is generated in France. We are number two on this market, 17% in the U.K., and then 36% elsewhere in Europe.
So other Europe means Scandinavia, EUR 600 million; Benelux, EUR 600 million; Germany, over EUR 400 million in revenue; Spain, EUR 200 million; Italy, EUR 100 million; and Switzerland, slightly under EUR 50 million. We deliver all of our services in the value chain. So we have what we call an end-to-end approach, starting with consulting, which represents 9% of the group's revenues, and we have a brand, Sopra Steria Next. Then we have what we call our core business, so systems integration. This is where we develop solutions, applications, and we implement market-standard products. We update and maintain legacy applications, and this represents 59% of the group's revenue. Then build and run activities, so cloud and technology services, cybersecurity, that represents 11% of revenues.
Then we've got 6% of what we call solutions with three product lines: Sopra HR, HR solutions, specialized in payroll. We are the benchmark player on the market, especially in France. Solutions on property management. We're a reference for social housing and then specialized lending as well. Then we've got our BPS business in the UK, which represents 15% of the group's revenue. Now, if we look at revenue distribution by sector, you can see that we've made choices. We've chosen strategic verticals. Four of them represent 70% of the group's revenue.
Public sector 26%. Across the board in the group, we address major challenges for ministerial departments, local authorities, their challenges as well. In the social sphere as well in France, we're number one. Big volumes generated in France, in the U.K., and in Scandinavia. Then we've got two verticals which have been grouped together, so aerospace and defense, which represents 24% of revenues. The number one customer for the group is Airbus, with over EUR 400 million in revenue. We also work in this sector for Dassault, Safran, and Thales. And then space, defense, and security. We work for government departments. We work for armies in France. For example, that represents EUR 200 million in revenue, same in the U.K. We also address challenges for homeland departments, Home Office.
So, bear in mind that we work in France with the French police, in the U.K., in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Germany, and in Norway, so we're very much present. Then banking, financial services, 20% of the group's revenue, fourth largest sector, and here we address major challenges of this market, so we work with all major French banks, but you already know this, so also Santander, Bankinter, Rabobank, ING, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank. This is our playing field, and then finally, we also address major mission-critical players in the energy sector, in transport, and telcos as well, so we've chosen strategic verticals, and we've also chosen to address major accounts, so for 20 years now, we've had a large accounts strategy, working closely with these accounts, and we deliver the full offer portfolio to these accounts.
The top 100 accounts in Sopra Steria represent 70% of the company's revenue. So the company was created by Pierre Pasquier in 1968. It's grown. It's developed based on fundamentals, based on values which are still alive and still embodied. They're part of the company. So this guides our managers, our employees' behavior, and this is very important. So we have six values: putting the customer first, willingness to take positive action, collective mindset, respect for others, professional excellence, and then open-mindedness and curiosity. And these values are the cultural foundations of the company. So it's a family story, and this makes the company attractive for our employees, for our managers. And this culture encourages entrepreneurial spirit, encourages our managers to be responsible and to take decisions.
And decisions are taken as close as possible to the ground. We're not there for quick wins with a short-term vision. We work with a long-term approach, and this applies to all of our stakeholders. And then the value of being close to each other, our customers or our employees, and listening to them. And this also takes into account the fact that Sopra Steria has placed human resources at the heart of its project. So the quality of our recruitment, our skills, our expertise, when we have over the four, five years, on average, we've recruited 10,000 employees every year. So it's important. And then training our teams as well. 7% of our employees are dedicated to training. And then also the capacity to provide interesting career paths, specific career paths, so our employees can find their place.
And then the last point that I want to highlight. This is obviously a matter for all citizens, but we've also implemented sustainability, meaning that it's in the heart of our project. Sopra Steria is committed to the United Nations Global Compact. We've launched our first environmental plan 15 years ago. Sopra Steria has the Institut de France, and that organization has celebrated its 20-year anniversary. Our customers, they're saying this as well. Our cultural foundations represent us well, and they're what enable us to stand out. Sopra Steria has an independent corporate plan and a core shareholder, Sopra GMT, which holds 19.6% of capital and over 33% of voting rights. There's a pact with management. This is a project which engages all employees. There's an employee shareholder program. It's engaging our employees into the company's development and performance.
This is very important. Employees hold 6.3% of capital. That's the company profile in short. Now, before we move on to the group's strategy, I'd like to just spend a couple of moments on the digital services market in Europe. According to Gartner, this market is valued at $421 billion. It's quite a specific market, very much concentrated on major geographic areas. 26% in the UK, 16% in Germany. France is country number three at 12%. Benelux and Scandinavia at 9%. These five geographic areas represent over 70%. It's 72% exactly of the European market. It's a market concentrated on key areas. And then its spending is also concentrated on major areas. Industries 30%, financial services 23%, and then defense and security 15%. With these sectors, we've got 70% of spending.
So concentrated on geographic areas, but it's also fragmented at the same time because when we look at digital services providers, we see that the top 30 don't exceed 50% of this market, and the number one player is at 5%. So when we look at the leaders in this market, these leaders have got the capacity to offer the entire value chain. They're talking to major players, and they've got a significant presence in all the major geographic areas that I've mentioned. And so Sopra Steria is ticking these boxes with one specificity that is we're very much concentrated on Europe. So when we look at Sopra Steria in Europe, we're top 10 in digital services, and we've got significant market share in France, over 5%. In Norway as well, over 5%. So in the top five in Norway, market share in various sectors.
So the public sector, defense, aeronautics, between 5.3 and 5%. And then a long-standing presence in financial services. And then more modest but solid, solid market share in the Benelux, in Germany, or in the U.K. So you can see that Sopra Steria's footprint is developing well, and it's aligned with, with the market. So now when we look at how this market is changing, I'll start with, with now. I'll start with the, the present moment. So after three quite enthusiastic years post-COVID, we've all seen that for several quarters now, the market is slowing down. It's even become flat for the reasons we know well: economic situation in Europe, political uncertainty, which means that key decision-makers are reducing or pushing back investment. We have confirmed a month ago at the end of October, we did our, we confirmed our guidance during the Q3 announcement for 2024.
So across all factors: revenue, profitability, and cash. And then if we look at revenue, we've announced revenue stable in 2024. And then when we take into account the first nine months of the year and then slight negative growth in Q4, that brings us to the end of the year. So we're going to launch 2025 based on these foundations. So in the short term, if we get away from the short term, we look after 2025. We're seeing that this market is a growing market, the structural growth driven by technology. And technology means digital. Digital is everywhere. It's at the heart of everything. It's considered by all decision-makers. There are no debates here. This is a genuine lever to be robust, a lever for performance, a lever for efficiency, and it's a transformation lever as well. Another factor which I'd like to highlight are the sovereignty challenges.
Driven by the geopolitical situation. These challenges are starting to become increasingly important, and they're having a bigger weighting in Europe. What are the growth drivers in this market? We've got the shift towards cloud. Obviously, that started 10 years ago, but it's not finished yet. The speed at which the sector is transforming has been different, but we can see that it's going far beyond lift and shift. And this is going to be a driver for the market in the five years coming. Then the market is obviously changing quicker. Two years ago, everyone was just talking about AI, but now ChatGPT, that's here. AI is going to change the market, change the business, focusing on data's and exploiting data, which has been underexploited. We've got these famous gold mines that everyone has heard about.
This is going to boost automation and optimization challenges for processes. Another gold mine in terms of potential business here. And then I would also add digital trust and securities, system security. No data, no AI. And if you haven't got cybersecurity, then you haven't got AI either. So that is how the market works, and that's the market in which we're operating. So what is Sopra Steria's plan within this market? We've got a project where we want to confirm our position as a leader, as a major leader in Europe in consulting and in digital services. We want to be considered by major decision-makers as a credible alternative to address all of their challenges. So an alternative to global players. We're also confirming our strategic choices. We've got four strategic sectors: public sector, financial services, defense and security, and aeronautics.
We're confirming our large account strategy as well, which we're reinforcing. So how, why is this project? Why should it be considered to be serious? It should be considered serious because we've made choices. We're moving from a services-based approach to a high-added value offers-based approach. So we want to deliver more value, more business value, and more digital value to our customers, for all our customers. So we've got to scale up in this domain, and we want to have an industrial approach to rolling out these technologies. And the last factor that I want to highlight is our capacity to combine skills. We already do this, but we want to move to scale. We want to combine technological expertise that our engineers have with this detailed knowledge of our customers and their business sector and their ecosystem.
This capacity to combine these expertise and these skills enables us today and in the future, at scale, to be able to offer our customers solutions that address their challenges. Tailor-made solutions. How is our project different? It's different because we've made choices, our playing field. We're not going to be dispersed. We're concentrated on Europe. So we've got our strategic sectors, and then we're focused on sovereign challenges, which are going to be increasingly important. And in this regard, we've started to build. We've got quite a unique positioning with CS. We've bought industrial assets, sovereign industrial assets. So monitoring industrial sites throughout the Olympic Games, for example, that was CS, and that was CS. So that is Sopra Steria. And then, the last thing that makes us unique is our culture.
So the trust that we have, this long-term approach, and this closeness that we have, and that's going to be a key differentiator over time. To implement this strategy, we've obviously got down to work. That's why we're having this Capital Markets Day. And we've identified four transformation levers, implementation levers. The way we sell, the way we produce, skills, our employee skills. So this is a transformation which we're determined to implement, but it is progressive. When we look at the four levers, the first of which is our offerings. What's at stake here? We want to industrialize this value ramp-up within the company and make sure that across the board, at scale, we can deliver the full value chain to our customers.
And then the operating model, this will enable us to address this previous challenge, so accelerate our go-to-market, but also build a European group, which is more standardized, which is more coherent, more effective, in the way it operates. Third challenge is the HR transformation. We place our teams, our employees at the heart of our plan. So obviously, we're only going to win, with our employees on side. So firstly, we're putting in place the right conditions so that our teams can ramp up, their skills, more business skills, more technology skills. And then, it's a good idea for our company to be able to generate its leaders, its executives itself. So that's going to keep us busy in the coming years. And then the last lever is industrialization.
So the idea is to use Gen AI to be more efficient, both internally, but then also with regards to our external stakeholders. So I've spoken about these four levers, but we do have an accelerator. So, let's be factual here. We've got an M&A strategy which represents €1 billion by 2028 to accelerate the group's strategic positioning, but also to support growth for the forthcoming years. So we're off to a rolling start. We've already taken various decisions since 2022. We've recruited various people. We've promoted key people in key roles. So we recruited Fabrice a couple of years ago to be responsible for consulting. And then Axelle joined us a year ago to focus on corporate social responsibility and sustainability challenges. Dominique has been recently appointed Group COO. That was a couple of months ago. So we've already triggered this change.
And another change which is underway now for several years is that we've launched major programs which cross-cut the group, impacting all employees, so focusing on technological expertise, so RAISE for AI, Mohammed, will be able to talk about that later, but then also cloud and cybersecurity, and then you will have noticed that we've changed Sopra Steria's scope, and we've done that with some key structural decisions, the first of which was the sale of Sopra Banking Software, which clarifies the group's strategy and positioning, so a consulting and digital services company in Europe. Second decision was strategic acquisition since 2023 to reinforce the company's positioning either in specific geographical areas in Europe or in strategic domains. CS, I've mentioned about that. I've talked about our sovereign assets, to reinforce our positioning in defense, security, and space as well.
Basically from scratch, well, we already had a presence with Sopra Steria, but basically we've got a significant presence in the Benelux region with Tobania and Ordina to address major challenges for banks. So this sector, but then also European challenges, the European Commission and NATO. So what is the target profile for 2028? So revenue above EUR 7 billion. So this is a growth project. Obviously, total growth on average over this term is estimated at 6% per year. Next, a European but expanded and balanced presence. So balanced out between France and the rest of Europe. France is obviously the group's flagship and the group's benchmark, but the rest of Europe will represent 60% of the group. And we need this because we want to make the group more robust.
It's already very robust, but we want to make the company more robust based on five major areas which should all reach a critical mass or critical size around EUR 1 billion. So that already applies to France, but we've got the U.K. as well, Benelux, Scandinavia, and Germany. We want to deliver more value, more, business value, more technological value. So we're going to double the size of the consulting business, which will represent 12% of the group's revenue, and then digital will represent 60% of the group's revenue as a target. So when you look at Sopra Steria's profile in 2028, Étienne will, come back to this, but it's going to be more efficient, better performing than the profile that the group has in 2023. So that's the outline of our project. I think I'll hand the floor to Dominique, who will go into more detail on our lines of transformation. Over to you.
Bonjour. Alors. Hello. So we'll be talking about transformation. As you probably know, it's been 15 years. Over the past 15 years, the world has been more volatile. What worked yesterday will not perhaps work tomorrow. There are more and more uncertainties hovering, more difficult to predict what's going to happen. It's a complex world, which is difficult to understand, which means that we have to adapt in such a world. Now, apart from that, apart from the fact that the world is complex, our companies are speeding up in the direction of the digital and sustainability and corporate CSR and organizations as well are speeding up. Several years ago, due to COVID, people had to work from home.
Today we're saying that people have to come back to the office and work at the office. It's a complex world, which is accelerating, and transformation is no longer a choice. It's a must. As Cyril said, there are four dimensions that we'll consider. We'll focus on our offerings or offers, our resources, our business model, and industrialization. These are the main thrusts, and we'll follow them and align on fundamental principles as well. That is the company culture to start with, and then simplicity and efficiency for more profitability. We'll start with the offer. Now, our business is incredible. We're never bored because this is about telecommunications services and information systems. Several decades ago, we had technological breakthroughs every 10 years and then five years. Now they happen every two years.
With the internet, we had SaaS, and then the cloud, and then the IoT, and then big data, 4G, 5G. These were accelerators. And today, what have we? We have artificial intelligence. These are incredible opportunities, both for us and for the clients as well. But at the end of the day, these business lines that we have for the customers are always the same. We do our job differently, but the business lines remain the same. That's first consulting. We advise our customers as to how to use these technologies so that we work on the large projects and the big tenders, thanks to our European consulting structure that's Sopra Steria Next, and the 3,500 consultants that we have. The second business line is the development of information systems for our customers. That's what we call systems integration.
There's a good example of that, which is a large program that we're rolling out in the world of defense at present, where we're working on an app platform that's going to collect information from satellites, vessels, and tanks, and connected soldiers, for instance, to consolidate the data, place them on a map so that the different headquarters know what's happening on the ground. That's a system that's quite complex. The third business line is operations or the run for our customers' environment. And, by the way, in 2025, we want to have a special line that's going to be called DPS, Digital Platform Services. They're going to be specialized in the run for the cloud environments of our customers. We have 6,000 people who work on this business line that covers Europe, but also India. And then we'll secure the IT and IS.
We have cybersecurity, and our consultants in cybersecurity can do a number of things. For instance, to secure networks and systems for a big avionics operator in Europe. And therefore, should there be a cyber attack, we have all countermeasures, and we can react in a positive way. And what's going to change then? What's going to be transformed? Well, so far, we were doing things in a bespoke manner that we were listening to the customers and would work with them. And now we want to have a ready-to-wear, if I can say, type of offering that'll combine a number of skills in a consistent way so that we're more attractive, more competitive, and so that we can industrialize our offering, our offers. And of course, in addition to this, we'll use solutions from the market, for instance, SAP and others like ServiceNow.
The second line or the second, thing that matters is resources, because in our business, what really is important is the gray matter. We've always been very careful in our hiring policies. We only hire engineers or the equivalent of engineers. We're going to be more demanding when we screen them, but also in terms of career development. We're going to help our people so that we can, they can make the best of what we want them to do. We'll do this in what we call the Academy, which is our training center. We delivered 1.5 million hours of training this year, and this Academy will help our workforce on the next gen, but also motivational management. That is, that's going to be the backbone of our company.
We want to strengthen the backbone of our company and make sure that all of our managers can develop in a faster way, and we want more women in our teams because we want to open up much more than we've done so far, and like any other company, our HR process is a process. So we're going to use what we can to simplify this, but also we want this to be more digitized thanks to artificial intelligence, and the third dimension is our operating model. Now, some of you know that by heart. We've had nice organic growth in the past, and we acquired companies as well, and we tended to focus on integrating these companies that we took over without imposing a business model, and there are productivity gains at stake.
We're going to have an operating model which is going to be the best matrix that adapts to your culture, thanks to which we'll be able to focus on our verticals. As Cyril was saying, we have verticals in the company: aeronautics, financial services, the public sector. These verticals will be strengthened from end to end, from customer relations down to the commitments we have in our projects, but also the profitability of these projects. That's the first level. The second layer is the service lines, that'll, that is, that'll lead to the business lines I described before, thanks to which we can massify our technological expertise. Finally, we'll have the corporate level. The corporate level will be stronger than in the past. It'll be the orchestrator of these models.
They will define the policies, but also they will draw up a model thanks to which we can integrate the future acquisitions in a simpler way and more quickly. We'll focus on good integration, but also the right business model that'll be more harmonized, and finally, industrialization. I could have included this in the business model itself. Industrialization, what does that mean for us? Well, what it means is that we're going to make sure that the engineers will have the methods and tools that they need so that they can always deliver the same level of quality or even better, and so that they can be more productive. Here's an example of that, an example of industrialization, what we call Digital Enablement Platform, DEP. DEP is a tool that engineers will be using for development, thanks to which they will no longer have to do the basic tasks.
That's not what an engineer should do, and therefore their productivity will be augmented. This is the best type of tool. Some competitors are looking at the tool with envy, and customers like it. 50% of our developers use the DEP tool, and you could ask, why only 50% of our developers? Well, that's when the model will be useful, because thanks to the model, thanks to the fact that we're going to be cross-cutting things, we'll be able to accelerate industrialization tools that are quality tools that we have. We were talking about AI. Okay. Now, what we've decided to do is to make sure that we use our AI skills for our customers, but also in-house. There are good AI initiatives, thanks to which we'll speed up on the industrialization front.
Then IDE is an AI agent specialized on project management, thanks to which our heads of projects, well, you know, IDE was run on our methods and the way we function. The second tool is called CYNIQ. That's an AI agent, specialized in consulting. Therefore, we'll have augmented consultants who'll be using our methods, but also all the documents that exist in what Fabrice calls the consulting house. Then finally, we're working on predictive analysis tools. As you probably know, what's difficult for us is to meet the deadlines of our projects. When there's some type of slippage, we tend to lose on our productivity. The whole point is to use GenAI, deep learning, neuronal networks, neural networks, so that we can anticipate on the future of our projects. If in six months there's a risk, we'd like to detect the risk right now.
And then industrialization is not just about methods and tools, but where the resources are. We made a decision which to make sure that we have expertise offshore. We have 5,000 people work in India. 30% of them already use the next-gen technologies. We have 1,000 people who work in Poland. They're specialized in RPA, robotic process automation. And we have 350 robots that are used 24/7 in Poland. And then in Spain, we have development engineers. They're going to be using DEP that is AI-boosted with the Copilot tool of Microsoft, and therefore they're going to be even more productive. These are the four dimensions I wanted to share with you. We're going to implement them strongly. And yet we very much know that this transformation is not where we want to go.
It's a journey based on the three P's: profit, but also people and planet. What's important for me is to roll this out and yet to stick to the DNA of the company, the culture of the company, and that's why we've been successful so far, and that's why we're going to continue and be successful in the future. Thank you very much. Now I'll hand over to Fabrice, who will be talking more about the European consultancy. Thank you very much, Dominique. Good morning, everybody. Very happy to be here and to share this presentation with you. We'll be talking about Sopra Steria Next, the consultancy arm of Sopra Steria, and I'll be talking about our ambitions, as Cyril said, so that we can accelerate its development, so that it contributes to the very success of our group.
To start with, let's have a look at Sopra Steria Next. I'll look at it from the group. What are the three value-added items coming from Next? First, we'll be closer to the decision-makers, the tech ones, but also the business leaders. That is, we'll share our views and we'll focus on some key accounts. And therefore, in doing that, we'll be able to start the best level of conversation with our customers. That leads to the second value-added. That is, we'll make proposals when customers are thinking about the major programs to launch, because they want the programs to succeed. And the third one focuses on consulting. We have our own growth dynamics, our own profitability standards that might help the group on its trajectory. Now let's zoom in on Sopra Steria Next. That maybe you're not fully acquainted with. Well, have a look at the numbers then.
More than 3,500 consultants in Europe, 30 offices, almost EUR 500 million in sales and revenues, and our growth this year was almost 7%. So 3,500 consultants. Where are they? Well, quite a lot of them in France, more than 1,000 consultants. And then we have other geographies in large countries, between 250 and 500 consultants in Scandinavia, Germany, the U.K., thanks to the recent acquisitions in Belgium and the Netherlands, working to launch Sopra Steria Next next year as a consulting business in the Netherlands and Belgium. And then we have another foothold, smaller footprint in Italy, and specialized offers as well for manufacturing, payments, and human resources. What's not surprising is that our organization is strong when Sopra Steria is strong.
We have industry practices that mirror the ones we have at group level, and that means that we can have dedicated consultants and therefore talk about how these major industries are going to change: public sectors, financial services, aeronautics, transport and energy, utilities, and defense and security. In addition to these key practices, the vertical practices, we've added specialty practices. There are two types: the ones that are business-oriented, and I was thinking about operating excellence, operational excellence. We know our customers' processes through and through, and then we'll focus on people and change, human transformation. We have more or less 500 consultants who are specialized to give guidance to human beings, when they go through transformation, and this will bring value only if they come to fruition.
And then finally, and that's not surprising, we have other specialties in tech advisory to the CIOs and company architectures, plus data and AI. So we'll use business consultants and tech consultants together. By combining the teams, we'll provide our customers with solutions that will be very good in two respects that are essential in our business. First, our customers will be in a position to set the priorities for their investments when technology is going to bolster their business. They will understand the new technologies and how they bring value to their businesses. And number two, we'll do something which is more difficult than that. That is, the customers will be able to anticipate the deployment of these new solutions and the impact on the IS legacy that our customers use. That is, what works in POC will work in real life.
Experience shows that it's not always the case. Let's have a look at our position. You know the market. We're looking at EUR 70 billion in Europe with four major segments. We cover, we'll be covering three out of four of these segments. This is our historic positioning. We provide guidance to our customers. We help them go through their transformation. That's 50% of our business so far. It'll remain stable if we look at the volumes. The weight relatively will go down since we intend to increase twofold our revenues. The second segment is that of transformation consulting. Our customers want us, want our teams to help them and help them through the transformation. We're here to secure, accelerate their transformation that's already started. Our increase will be 2.5 times the revenues for this business. That's our target.
And then we have another activity, which is management consulting. For the time being, it's only 10% of our revenues. We'd like this to increase fivefold. That is, bring all the value added we can to our customers as upstream as we can. We'll help them understand the large programs, set the priorities for their capital expenditure as early as they can. So to increase twofold, we'll be using three levers. The first lever is that of volumes. There's always market share that we can gain, regardless of the customers. What we can do is that we can use the fact that we're close to them and our teams provide value added and therefore we can gain market share from the competition. As Cyril said, we're here to stay. So we're close to our customers. Number two, the selling prices.
Now, what we've been doing over the past two years is that we've deployed very strong programs so that we provide even more value added to our customers. This will bolster our growth in the years to come. And in addition to this, and, in some regions, in some practices, we think we can be stronger if we acquire talent. So acquisitions is not easy. It's never easy. And in consulting, it's particularly difficult. So we'll be vigilant. We'll be careful. We'll look at the good cultural match between them and us. And also, we want to make sure that we protect the entrepreneurship of the key leaders who will be joining us through these acquisitions. This is the plan that we drew up more than a year ago, and it's based on six priorities. I'm not going to read them all, but I'd like to highlight two of those.
The first one, which is the most important one, is that we want to assert the fact that Sopra Steria Next is unique. We don't want to be like any other consulting firm. There are so many consulting firms. Why? So we want to be unique and stand out. What does that mean? That means that we have a list of methods that we'll be using so that we are unique in all the projects we work on, and all the consultants will be doing this with our customers. So we are unique, as I said before. And our uniqueness is based on what's very difficult to do for the key leaders. That is, to make sure that we shorten the time to market. What works in the lab, in the POCs, should work and have full impacts when we deploy the plans.
If you look at the P&L, you should see the tangible value of technologies on your profit line. Our strength is based on the group's strength. There's no surprise about this. That is, we have access to the best skills, technological skills. Our consultants, when they advise our customers, can use all the experts we have in consulting or the other business lines of the group, and number two, Sopra Steria, as I said, is very close to its customers and their information systems, which means that when we advise our customers, we can anticipate all the conditions so that they succeed, so that they use the new technologies and embed them in the legacy systems, so no data, no AI, no data, nothing much, so we have to connect to the information systems that the customers have, and we have to plug these new layers.
That's key for their success. That's how we can be unique, and this translates into a number of tools, tools that our consultants will be using and the clients as well, so that we can do this whenever we work on consulting with our customers. If you look at the bottom four, fundamentals, all the initiatives have been launched. We'd like to deploy this everywhere with the 3,500 consultants in the 30 offices we have, which means that all the customers, day in, day out, will see how this works. The second priority I'd like to highlight is one of our accelerators based on AI, and it's very much connected to what I've said. That is, we want to be a benchmark player in what I call AI at scale. That is, our ability to fully deploy AI for our customers. Now, to do this, we've focused on three things.
First, which is obvious, we made sure that all of our consultants, and I mean all of our consultants, know how to engage in a true conversation with our customers on AI, not just Gen AI, but all types of AIs. So we've set up a program, a training program, and certification program for all of our consultants so that this conversation really happens, so that regardless of the projects, we can use AI because AI will provide benefits, more productivity, and better relations with our customers. The second thing we worked on is that we focused on the key success factors for the large companies that want to deploy AI. Maybe you've read the two reports we published last year. There was one on Gen AI, and we recommended that the customers should focus on four priorities for 2024.
There's a more recent report that we published, which is a more holistic vision on AI and its evolution. We've said two things. Number one, how much should the large companies spend in AI? 6% today, 10% tomorrow. And this is going to help our clients. They will know if they're on the right tracks at the right speed. And number two, where should you spend and how? So we've helped them understand the four types of AIs that you can see here. And for each of our industrial sectors, we've told our customers where they should invest on the four archetypes, which means that we can start this conversation with our customers. We can talk about this. We can talk about capital expenditure. Where do we want to invest in which type of AI?
We can talk about Gen AI or predictive AI, how we can use both together. This is key for the customers. For years and years, they've developed predictive AI layers, and now they're wondering if they have to replace them or connect them with Gen AI as well, and we've taken another angle as well, which is the angle of deployment. As we said, no data, no AI. What do you need to invest so that you upgrade all of the AI platforms so that they meet the requirements that we need to meet in AI? That's what customers want. It's a major challenge for them.
There's an anecdote or a number I like, which is that today, if you look at our business portfolio in AI, you will see that for the customers, one out of seven algorithms, one out of seven is still good if it's deployed at large scale. So it means that six out of seven algorithms will have a performance that'll collapse because they don't have data. There's no quality, and all the IS systems on the basis of AI will not give you the information at the right speeds so that you can roll out your plans and act, and we have drawn up six major offers that cover what's upstream for companies that are not really mature and then acculturation, and number two, to have POCs that are deployed quickly.
The proofs of concept are good, but we need to industrialize them if they're good, with a good level of performance. We'll help them with their industrialization. I was talking about the data platforms before. I can talk about the ramp-up of AI factories. That is, to have teams together with the AI specialists and the clients' AI specialists that will be working on these AI factories. And then two other well-targeted offers on topics that we think are very mature for the clients. That is, the contact centers, Gen AI-powered contact centers for more productivity and customer satisfaction by deploying Gen AI solutions in contact centers for customers, and then AI for better productivity of IT and IS teams. Dominique was talking about this. We do this ourselves. Therefore, we're credible. We have credibility. We can talk about this with our customers.
Sometimes, if it doesn't work well enough, what should you do so that you have more IT and IS people who bolster your productivity? This is our positioning today for AI. And our position focuses very much on our impact. And finally, the Pageographer, this is what we do in a tangible way for our customers. Now, I was born in France. I'm French. I'm very happy to see that we have digitalized criminal justice. More than four million proceedings have been digitized in France. That's Sopra Steria Next and Sopra Steria, of course.
I'm very happy to see and glad to see that we're helping the French Education Ministry, Ministry of Education, to pay teachers and all those who work for the national education, but also we can recruit with a virtual platform, thanks to which we've had more than 250,000 candidates that we managed in a period of six months. If you look at national education, this is really good. And then awards. I like receiving awards and prizes, but at least you see the exact value that we can provide. Now, outside of France, we could talk about Spain, what we've done with AI for Iberpay, the card operator in Spain. And thanks to AI, we've strongly reduced the risk of false positives, which, as you know, is a big challenge in terms of customer satisfaction. Nothing, nobody's going to bother you if you have no problems.
And then we've reduced the risk of fraud. There's another interesting project abroad, which is in Germany for an insurance group, Gothaer. We've used all the digital levers to do two simple things. Number one, efficiency. That's for the support teams and the sales teams, and their agents are more efficient now. And therefore, there's more cross-selling that they can work on. Look at the results there on the slide. And finally, if I may, I'd like to finish with two more innovative experiences. Now, for the marine networks, Alcatel Submarine Networks, so that's for the cables. We have 5G deployed in a factory to reduce maintenance time, and that's really good. Reduction in maintenance so that they can deploy this with their customers. And also, what the consultants preferred this year is our project for Booking.com. Booking.com.
We've helped them detect all the reasons why people with disabilities travel a lot less than others and how Booking.com can provide them with solutions to help people with disabilities when they're traveling. So these are very practical examples. You see our business is there. That is, to secure the transformation projects of our clients and to speed them up. This is what Sopra Steria Next is. It's going to be a major benchmark in Europe. Thank you very much for your attention. I think the time has come now for a coffee break.
This is an extraordinary time. One of unprecedented change and uncertainty. A technological revolution. A shifting climate. A growing population. Global instability. The world is accelerating. AI is transforming industries. What worked yesterday may not perform tomorrow. This is a turning point where change is inevitable, but winning is a choice. So we're choosing progress. We're choosing to move at pace. We're committing to change. We're all in.
Bonjour à tous. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mohammed Sijelmassi. I'm going to talk about how technology is a transformation lever. So I'd like to remind you that we're going from a services-based approach to an offshore-based approach, and we're aiming for 60% of our revenues generated in the digital domain. So when we talk to our customers, we like to think about what are their expectations, what are their major concerns. So they're in different categories, obviously. Beyond cybersecurity, this is a big concern for everybody here in the room. But number one, they're thinking about operational efficiency. How can they use technology to better deliver their services?
The second key challenge is the arrival of new stakeholders who are digital natives or major players like GAFAMs in the payments domain or fintechs as well, and then at the same time as this, we've got regulatory obligations, so there are more and more regulations focusing on things like the AI Act and GDPR, and I think when we're talking to our customers, one of their major concerns is also how they can minimize their ecological impact and respond to ESG concerns, so technology is a lever for transformation, so instead of talking about technology, what I want to talk about is technologies, several technologies. We haven't got one technology which is going to solve all our problems. It's a subset of technologies, so then we'll think about what our role as Sopra Steria is. Our role is to use these technologies to address these technologies.
We're not going to do technology for the sake of it. We're going to use technology to address the challenges we've mentioned. So firstly, we have to build reliable systems because we're addressing critical processes. We're focusing on corporate transformation. So they've got to be reliable. Then they've got to be—we have to be able to industrialize them. What does that mean? So this means the capacity to duplicate solution components based on our assets to improve time to market, but also to make them more reliable. This is what Dominique was mentioning when he was talking about industrialization. The second key component is sustainability. Sustainability, you can't see that at the end. It's by design. It's upstream. So this is why with our design methods that we have, we integrate the notion of sustainability, and we have sustainability by design.
And then another point which is going to become increasingly important, and that is ethics. So why is this increasingly important? Basically, with the arrival of AI and then integration of AI across the board, this introduces the risk of bias, of discrimination, which we must take into account from the get-go. So I'll come back to that, and I'll talk about how our tools take this into account. So the matter isn't new. We've been talking about this for several years now. We've launched technology projects for several years. And so I'll give you a few examples which highlight various projects where we've got a subset of technology which we've combined to address a specific business challenge. The first is smart industry. I think Cyril quoted some figures when he was talking about industry. This is an important market, growing markets.
The key concerns are basically, how does technology enable me to deliver better and quicker? So reliability, once again. In this domain, we use digital twins. So we simulate situations using digital twins. So things are complicated. It's difficult to come up with a solution right away. But when we combine analysis, insight with this digital vision, and we test things, this is how we can optimize supply chain to come up with a solution. Okay, if we haven't got an optimal solution from the get-go, we can optimize it. So that's point number one. Point number two is related to ethics and technology. We're talking about what we do in the U.K. with debt management to avoid excessive debt. So we're making sure that we can anticipate situations where people are in excessive debt.
We put in place the necessary measures to avoid this type of situation of excessive debt. We have launched a program. It is being ramped up. Today, we have got nine major customers who are using this solution, and they are managing over 90 applications or files a year. Cash collection is at around GBP 450 million. This technology includes predictive AI, cloud, security technology. Obviously, these are secure systems. Another point which Cyril has already touched on, but I like it, so I am going to talk about it again, is PARADE. PARADE is the system that we have rolled out for the Olympic Games. There are 14 systems which are capable of identifying and taking action when it comes to lots of different objects. Here, we used Computer Vision, Edge Computing, data, satellite data. It is this subset here that was used.
So my message here is that we're not using just one technology. We're using a set of technology. And our role is to combine these different technologies to produce a solution which is sustainable and which can be industrialized. So which technology? Which technology should we be using? No surprises here. You probably know something about them, but I'll come back to them. So I want to share a few key beliefs with you. With regards to cloud, there was a first step which included modernizing infrastructure. Cyril mentioned lift and shift, but not necessarily critical systems. But now, today, we're coming to the next step where we're modernizing systems. And this is where there's more and more value for companies. So how do we address operational efficiency challenges? Well, cloud and modernization enables us to address these challenges. We can add data, AI capacities to automate these systems.
And then another reason why we think cloud will keep growing is because there is the need to use significant calculation resources which generate data and generate AI. So all of this is interlinked. And then another growth factor which we've seen in the cloud domain as well is sovereignty. Sovereignty, we've mentioned this. This is an important factor for a European company. It's even more important. So what are the resources that we have to produce solutions for our customers who require sovereign solutions? So we've got various agreements, certifications, expertise. We work with our partners. Whether it be OVH, Outscale, or regardless of our partners, we can roll out solutions in trusted environments. Then market analysts are talking about almost 30% growth up until 2025 per year in the cloud domain. So for data, this is a key factor in process analysis.
This is key when it comes to our capacity to offer our customers the best service, the best recommendations. Today, we've seen an increase or a growth in data lakes, data insight, and then obviously AI. We can't do AI without data. Sopra has also mentioned this. We've seen forecasts with our customers, and we're talking about a 25%-30% growth up until 2030. AI. Fabrice has spoken about this. We continue to have this hybrid situation. We've got AI, traditional AI. I don't like this term, but prescriptive, predictive AI. AI that we've known now for many years. The first AI skill centers were set up seven years ago. But it's this association or this combination with generative AI. The solutions that we're imagining today are solutions which integrate both types of AI. Gen AI and then the so-called traditional AI.
So once again, it's important. And I think Fabrice has underlined the matter. But we're not doing AI for the sake of it. We're using AI to address challenges. And today, we consider that all of our processes are processes which are going to embed AI tools. And so we're not going to have isolated AI projects. AI is integrated and at scale. So we'll come back to the Gen AI and engineering later. But we've got now emerging technologies. In the future, in the close future, we need to imagine which technologies will be the foundations of our expertise in the future. So we've got several approaches to addressing the matter. We've created a corporate venture several years ago. And this corporate venture's role with the different verticals is to identify the startups which can help us to build solutions.
We won't build everything, but we'll associate or combine solutions, so with our expertise and with our partners' expertise. And this year, we've evaluated about 500 ventures. And we've got about 50 agreements. And we've invested in three of them in specific domains. So computer vision, encryption, and quantum computing. So we've invested in corporate ventures, we're talking about EUR 5 million worth of investment. So this initiative supplements what we're doing in our verticals where we think about which are the right technologies which will enable them to move forward. And we think about how we're going to integrate these technologies. So vertical by vertical, we identify the technology, whether it be smart industry, IoT, edge, whatever. Even if these technologies haven't got the lion's share today, we think about which ones we need to integrate for the future.
So we're very confident in the fact that we're going to hit our target of 60% of next-gen technologies. So what are our resources? What do we have? Our role is basically to, once again, we don't do technology for the sake of it. We think about the bigger picture here. And Cyril mentioned the RAISE program. So I'd like to say a couple of words on that. I'll give you a couple of examples. We say to our customers that AI and Gen AI is going to profoundly change the way they work. And all industries are going to be impacted by this change in the long term. So IT is an industry. And so as a result of this, we are going to be impacted. So we have to anticipate this impact. So halfway through 2023, obviously with executive management, we decided to launch the RAISE program.
The goal of this program is to coordinate all AI activities that we have across all our entities. So you'll see this later on. But we've got 4,000 experts, data AI experts. So we're thinking about how we can lay down common foundations. What are our goals? How we can help our customers to roll out, choose solutions at scale. So with Fabrice, we're working on this together. And then for our own needs as well, we're thinking about how generative AI is going to change the role of the developer, of analysts, of project managers. And then obviously, this domain is highly scalable. What is our watch? How are we monitoring the domain? How do we use our skills to implement a watch? And how do we choose the most suitable solutions?
Beyond being a major training program, which was obviously launched with all our Sopra Steria Next consultants, we need to make sure that this program is a success. To ensure its success, we're rallying across all of our entities 150 people. They're not the only people who do AI. We've got the 4,000 others as well. We've got this 150 people to coordinate everything, think about the areas which we will focus on. That's the RAISE program. Now, obviously, in our business, we regularly change the way we work. To do so, something that Dominique mentioned several years ago, we launched the DEP, the Digital Enablement Platform. The first version was launched in 2017. Now we've got 12,000 developers working on it. What does it intend to do? Why is it an advantage?
To work at a level of high quality, we need to be able to reuse tools so that we can concentrate on other things like algorithms, which are more important. We're recruiting about 10,000 people a year. Our engineers, they've got good training. We have to help them to be more industrial. They've all got basic training, but we have to add to this. We also need to integrate all the matters at stake. Whether it be security, design matters, measuring the impact of our solutions. These are not separate solutions. These are all sub-solutions which are integrated into this platform. This platform is specific. It gathers together all of our capacities that we have in data. We're talking about a set of data capacities which we can roll out in our skills centers.
You've got the figures on the slide. And we aim to double this by 2028 in order to support our challenges. And so one point that I haven't yet mentioned, but I'd like to conclude on, is the matter of ethical and responsible trusted AI, or the issues that are on the right of the slide here now. So for four years, we've been focusing on the matter. We're a founding member of the Confiance.ai program. We've got industrial players, academics working together, and research. So that's all combined under that program, the Confiance.ai program. And this program has methods and tools. And so we're responsible for the platform. And the results of this program are integrated in our platform that I mentioned earlier on. So I have full confidence in what we want to do because I know that we have the right resources. We're implementing the right methods. And we're anticipating the future of technology. Thank you for listening. Bonjour à toutes.
Good morning. I'm Axelle Lemaire. And we will talk about sustainable development at Sopra Steria. Well, sustainability is something that we look at from the angle of social and environmental performance. Our approach is based on the economic and financial performance. It's a strategic orientation that's very important so that we bring novel value added, but also so that this becomes a lever for better performance and for the transformation of the group. This is possible because we have a sustainability trajectory which is very demanding. It's based on solid foundations on the basis of our historic model, which is a lasting company. Because what we want is consistency with the project that started at Annecy, that is, we'll keep our DNA despite the changes.
It is ambitious if you look at our target. As you will see, our company is going to be the best player in our sector, in the tech sector, but also if you look at listed companies in France. It's exhaustive because we've decided at the same time to look at environmental and social impacts. That's very much in line with sustainability from the UN. The company is well anchored in Europe. Therefore, this is an asset for us because, as you know, Europe is leading if you look at what the key players are doing in the world. They help the economic players accelerate. Therefore, what we do is very much consistent. Our scope is based on skills, regulation, and infrastructure that are solid in Europe. Now, the context that we've seen. The context is that people are more and more demanding.
They have higher expectations. If you look at the global indicators for the planet, things are worsening, and we've already exceeded six out of nine objectives. The objective, which is to meet the Paris Agreement, is far away. The impacts on human beings are felt more and more strongly. Given the fact that we're seeing all this, and also because we've seen that our customers are more and more demanding, more particularly in some sectors like the public sector, transportation, energy, and financial sectors, we have to act. The traditional approach that we have in our business, that is price, deadlines, and quality, to which we can add quality or security, sorry, is something to which we have to add sustainable efficiency and guarantees as to our commitments. This is a new paradigm.
The customers are expecting their service providers to help them meet their own environmental objectives within a value chain where people share responsibility. This is true because, as you can see, Europe is speeding up in terms of transparency and standardization with CSRD, for instance. What we do in our approach is that we make sure that we constantly apply the following principle. That is, you can only abate what you've mentioned before. Therefore, what's very important is to collect data, to analyze data very accurately. Therefore, our engineers today are endowed with a monitoring tool that is being deployed at scale in the group. With this level of accuracy, we'll be able to act and keep a low profile, though, for continuous improvement in a cross-cutting way in our organization, not just in the hands of the reporting teams.
We're here to help develop the new standards in this area because this represents business excellence tomorrow, professional excellence tomorrow. But these are the early stages only. We are going to continue with a ramp-up phase. Sopra Steria is a driving force in this trend. This is a collective endeavor. Our objective is to fit in an international framework and play a just role and make sure that all the climate objectives are aligned on the starting point. The group, therefore, has a clear heading. The group started signing, well, started working on this when the Paris Agreement was signed so that we reach the Net Zero objectives. SBTi will validate our objectives in 2017. They're based on two dates, 2030 and 2040. They're declined on basis of scopes in line with the GHG Protocol standards.
The objective is to decarbonize Scope 1 and 2 and therefore reduce GHGs by 54% in the six years to come, compared with a benchmark that was 2019, and also to reduce them in Scope 3 by 37.5%. At the end of December 2023, we were very much in line with the objectives. Of course, it'll be based on the results of the audit that's going on at present. It'll be the case this year. Our sector produces, in reality, very few direct and indirect emissions in Scope 1 and 2. In other words, that means that our industry doesn't pollute very much directly. And therefore, we can try out a number of things. And our teams can start embarking on new virtuous practices with a view to improving our operational performance.
If we look at all the details, we'll see that the decrease of emissions is in line with the objectives, 4.9% annually for scopes one and two. That means in absolute values, we're overshooting and 3.4% on scope three. In other words, that means it's a strong slope, but it's a straight line that we're following. And this projection is based on well-identified quick wins. But in addition to this, of course, there are other actions that we need to roll out in depth. And that's what's interesting in this. That is, it's a group commitment. And this will trigger a number of actions. There are levers that we're going to use so that the whole Sopra Steria organization will be working on detailed programs that we rolled out in all of our subsidiaries and countries.
For instance, the energy sobriety plan, thanks to which we have very good results. We've reduced energy consumption at the office by 20% compared with 2021. We'll choose the best building so that we can maintain on the basis of very strict environmental management rules. We'll enlarge or we'll broaden the scope of certification ISO 14001. We want to cover 80% of our employees on our sites that will be certified by the year 2028. Here's another example. We've looked at the platinum certification from the EcoVadis platform. This is not enough for us, even though we're rated at 92 out of 100. We are in the top 1% of the best companies in the sector with the best level of performance. That's not enough because we need to focus on Scope 3 and improve on Scope 3.
As you know, these are the emissions that are the most complicated to abate for all companies, by the way, because this is in the hands of third parties, so we have to work with procurement and the IS and IT department. We'll have a sustainable purchasing policy. We'll rate the providers with whom we work on the basis of their financial weight, but also on the basis of their carbon footprint so that we can change our contractual practices with them. The best recognition is probably based on the carbon disclosure project, CDP, because we've been doing this for years, and it's still at an excellent level, level A, but there are other levels like the AGEFI. This year, they gave us the award for the best environmental performance of the year, but we'd like to do more than that.
There are new action plans that we're currently launching so as to target the other GHG emission lines. We'll have a plan thanks to which we can reduce our carbon footprint by 15% when people travel. That's for the next three years, and we'll reduce the IT footprint of the group. That's a project that we've launched. This is crucial because the user terminals, the networks, the servers, the cloud services that go with them represent what people work with, and this represents 40% of our carbon footprint. Our objective is not to model these estimates data, but to calculate our real carbon footprint, and then we'll have to discuss with the main IT and cloud providers so that we can change the practices in the industry so that we use our computers longer so that we can recycle them and reuse them.
The objective is to get information as to how we use natural resources. That means our water consumption and energy consumption. This, in the light of Gen AI. Corporate responsibility means more than that. It's not just the value chain that matters. We want to have an impact on society in a general way. Therefore, we're exploring all the plans that we can think of so that we broaden the scope of our horizon thanks to a strategy that we call BVCM, Beyond Value Chain Mitigation. This week, for instance, we've given financing to two startups in green tech to help them develop thanks to sustainable linked loans, so a credit line given by the banking pool connected or conditioned to on the basis of their environmental performance.
We have a project to deacidify the water in oceans and another one to grow trees and oases in very dry areas to help the food producers and farmers. Then the social dimension. In CSR, that's very important, as you know, because this is a service business. It's based on the creation of value by women and men who work for the company. Now, this is a holistic approach. We care for our people. We care for the planet. It's been more than 20 years, as Cyril said. Sopra Steria has been a member of the Global Compact of the United Nations. Therefore, we've embarked on this journey. We follow the 10 principles connected to the environment and human rights and comply with the fact that we combat corruption.
And we have also other objectives for equal opportunities, regardless of your gender, age, or disability, or where you come from. The objective, of course, is to use all the talent pools that we can. And in our industry, this is very important. And what we want is people to feel good when they work for us. There are social policy actions for all of our employees so that we promote diversity, so that we fight against any type of discrimination. This is based on the fact that people will get specific certifications like EDGE. And this will start next year. And there will be training campaigns that people will have to attend. That will be compulsory. Now then, when we talk about having more women in the group, let's have a look at the results. They're not fully satisfactory.
If we look at the number of women we have at top managerial positions, well, look at the number. They were at 20.1%. That was last year, and here again, we've been working on this. We've improved slowly but steadily in a sector that's been suffering from the fact that people have their own stereotypes. Yet we're making effort. We've defined a group-level policy. We've targeted special groups that we want to promote in each country and each subsidiary. We want to have a better monitoring of the involvement of managers. They will see that these sustainable criteria will be included in the calculation of the group's performance and in their variable pay. But sustainability also has an impact on the local communities. For the past 25 years, we've been focusing on solidarity. That is education and digital education inclusion, sorry. We're proud of that.
In all of our countries, our employees work in associations. This is something that we encourage at the highest level in the company. This year, our vision has also focused on a very important theme for us, which is to help the younger generations that are the most vulnerable generations in and their loved ones in their digital life. We'll listen to others when they talk about this.
Without expecting anything in return, it's naive to say small actions create meaningful change. But having an entrepreneurial mindset means helping others. Because we all know giving doesn't lead to personal growth or fulfillment. It's unrealistic to believe one second that everything helps to build stronger communities, to bridge the digital divide. It's impossible. It would be insane to think that your time matters. However, your time matters.
It would be insane to think that it's impossible to bridge the digital divide, to build stronger communities. Everything helps. It's unrealistic to believe one second that giving doesn't lead to personal growth or fulfillment. Because we all know that having an entrepreneurial mindset means helping others. Small actions create meaningful change. It's naive to say who would give their time without expecting anything in return? Because we do. This is why Sopra Steria is proud of its employees who give their time, their energy to causes that matter. The work we've done together over the years is a movement that continues to evolve and inspire.
I suppose you're convinced you see how sincere our commitment is. Now, to finish, I'd like to insist on Sopra Steria's positioning. We're a trusted partner. This is a table that talks about our users and support we give to our systems, technological sustainability, and digital sovereignty. This is the overall claim that we have. Now, if we look at the three main activities, that is integration, service production, and consulting, the objective is to make sure that we target a new objective, which is sustainable digital approaches. As usual, we want to be an example that would be followed. We want to measure and we want also to focus on sobriety of users. We want to obtain certification that we get from the Institut du Numérique Responsable. Then we want to factor in the best practices and projects that our customers will be rolling out in eco-design of products and services.
And then we'll advise our customers when they focus on production models that will be more lasting so that technology is used for business objectives. I'll give you examples of projects. For instance, a responsible digital roadmap, the circular economy, and the physical flows that will be managed, decentralized production modes, and also the management of ESG data thanks to tools that we'll be deploying at our customers' premises. Therefore, the company will focus on three major aspects with new businesses. The CSOs, the Chief Sustainability Officers, will be rolled out in all of our countries, the green IT managers, the digital accessibility people, the IT for green consultants, the CSRD experts, and we'll have internal training as well. We will be investing in a program called Sustain to accelerate our business. And then we'll develop technological assets.
We'll do this thanks to tools that will be, if possible, open source, G for IT, and also EcoMind for AI. But we're not doing this on our own. Our objective is to co-design and to share the technical knowledge that we have with other stakeholders. This is why we're directly involved and work with certification organizations like AFNOR or regulators like ASEP. And also, we work on other initiatives like ESCO on cybersecurity. We'll be here to develop technical trust. This is key because we're here to provide products and services for industries that are vital for economy and society, public services, utilities, and for the protection of people.
This is why we also work on European projects like AIX, InfraTex, Simple as well, because in protecting the infrastructures and data, if we focus on the resilience of systems, we will promote the dissemination of reliable data to fight against misinformation, and thanks to all of these projects, you can see that our corporate responsibility is something tangible thanks to sovereign digital practices and ethical practices. Now that I've finished, let's have a look at the capital allocation strategy and the objectives of the group for 2028. I'll now hand over to Étienne.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, so before we talk about the group's capital allocation policy and targets for 2028, I want to go over a few points which help us understand the group's situation today, so from 2015 to 2023, so after the merger. So in terms of profitability, first of all, the group has reached a milestone. We were between 6% and 8% at the start of this period. And now our margin is close to 10% operating margin on business activity. This was a target we set ourselves three years ago. And Cyril said it for 2024, we're aiming for an operating margin on business activity of at least 9.7% consolidated. So obviously, this is because of close cost management, but it's also because of a ramp-up in the group's activities. Now, if we look at the group's cash generation, once again, big improvement.
Free cash flow has been multiplied by eight between 2015 and 2023. And this is explained by increased profitability, as I've just mentioned, but also by a clear improvement in changing our operating result into cash. So we were at 20% in 2015. We've set up a specific program, trained employees, implemented tools. We've also set management incentives. That's contributed to an improvement in this rate, which is clearly above 50% and means the group can deliver between 5%-7% of the group's revenue transformed into free cash flow. Now, if we look at capital allocation, but first of all, dividend. Once again, 2015, it was at EUR 1.70. Now it's at EUR 4.65. So compound annual growth rate of 13.4%. This improvement is linked to an improvement in profitability. The payout rate is above 30%. Yeah, obviously, take out two specific years that were linked to COVID.
Then last year, we had a depreciation in non-cash assets. The dividend payout ratio is between 30%-35% per year. Now, let's look at the acquisition policy and acquisitions' contribution to growth. That's obviously important to take into account. The group makes acquisitions regularly. We've had two different periods between 2015 and 2022, about EUR 100 million a year, and then we've had a clear acceleration as of 2023 with over EUR 400 million contribution to growth last year, so despite the significant investment in growth, the group is not in very much debt, and we're aiming for a leverage ratio below one, which is quite reasonable, so having reminded you all of these factors, it's important to know where we've come from, to know where we're going, so now let's think about how we allocate our cash for the upcoming period, so the group's capital allocation policy for 2028.
First point is that we want to uphold regular dividends, so regular dividends will be paid to our shareholders. So approximately 35% of net profit attributable to the group. We can also think about potential share buybacks. And that will obviously be decided on depending on the group's operational situation. Cyril has also said that we're planning on making EUR 1 billion worth of acquisitions by 2028 to speed up implementation of the strategy. We won't. See, these acquisitions won't add to the group's debt. And the leverage ratio will be lower than 1.5 times. Now, let's look at the acquisition policy framework. Firstly, it's not a need in itself. It's something that's going to accelerate our strategy. So our policy must support our strategy. We want to accelerate the construction of this European model that we've mentioned earlier on.
So we're aiming at around EUR 1 billion of revenue acquired by 2028. And there'll be several transactions. And they'll be medium size. We want to avoid operations that are going to be too big and difficult to integrate and include more risks. In terms of geographies, no surprises here. This is aligned with our strategy for the upcoming period or in the short term. We're not thinking about going further afield than Europe, so targeting Europe, so growth outside of France to rebalance out the group's geographical mix, so no surprises here. Our priority geographies are Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, and the UK, but obviously, we're not excluding tactical acquisitions in Italy, Spain, and then obviously in France as well.
With regards to the business lines at play, we've clarified our strategy with the disposal of SBS, so we're focused on digital business services, so we're going to privilege acquisitions in consulting and digital prioritized acquisitions in digital and consulting. Sorry, then we'll be focused on our strategic markets, which you know well.
The public sector, financial services, defense and security, and then aeronautics. Obviously, we're not excluding other tactical acquisitions in different verticals where we're already present. That's the overall framework. In financial terms, obviously, we have to be disciplined. We're going to have targets in terms of ROI. I'll come back to them later. The group has already proven its capacity to integrate its acquisitions in the Benelux, CS Group in France as well. We've seen an improvement in these entities' margins following the acquisitions. Now let's look at our targets for 2028. Revenue above EUR 7 billion, integrating acquisitions. This is based on an assumption of between 2% and 5% organic growth post 2025%, between 2% and 5%, sorry. We're going to carry on improving the group's operational performance.
The strategy in place means that we should exceed 10% operating margin. We've got the 2028 target, which is between 10% and 11% operating margin. What are the levers that we're going to activate to hit these targets? We want to have an improvement in all geographies. They're not all at this level today. We can make improvements. It's not just one geography, one entity that needs to improve. It's across the board. Then we've got the ramp-up in value of our services. Obviously, there'll come with an improvement in sales prices, margins. I'm looking at Fabrice now. Consulting's contribution representing 12% of revenue will contribute to these targets as well. Then the increase of technology services, which should represent 60% of revenues. Dominique has also mentioned that we can still improve our operational efficiency as well.
We've got room for maneuver when it comes to our project portfolio. So we're going to make we've made improvements a few quarters back. And this is starting to pay off. So we're seeing that we've got various projects that aren't at the nominative level. So there are improvements to be made here. So rolling out tools at scale, industrializing everything that Dominique presented earlier, but also ramp-up in offshore as well. And then more traditionally speaking, we'll keep on optimizing the group's real estate footprints. And we should deliver synergies linked to acquisitions already made. So now let's come take a look at the key indicators. We want to ensure that the group has a structural level of operating margin above 10%. That's our key target. So it's going to become the lower limit for us. I've spoken about acquisitions. I've spoken about revenue.
Then also discipline as well. What does this mean? We want to improve the ROCE, the return on capital employed. It's at 16.5% in 2023. And we're aiming to hit 20% in the long term, so before tax in 2028. We'll also have better operating margin, but more effective in terms of the way we use our cash. So hoping for free cash flow over revenue of between 5%-7%. Shareholder return at least 35% of the group's revenue. And then we may be able to make share buybacks depending on the group's operational situation and share price. And then financial resources allocated to acquisitions. We're aiming for a leverage ratio of less than 1.5% at the end of the term. So thank you for listening. I'll now hand the floor back to Cyril for the conclusion. [Foreign language]
Thank you, Étienne. We've come to the end of this presentation. Now we're going to move on to the Q&A session. I'll just say a few words of conclusion before we open up the Q&A. We've got a plan. We're a major leader in Europe in consulting and digital services. We want to be clearly identified as a credible alternative to global players to address key decision makers. As such, we've decided to confirm our European plan with an extended, more well-balanced mix between France and the rest of Europe. France is obviously our flagship. It's the group's flagship. Sopra Steria is going to be solid. It's going to be able to draw on five different regions, which will be generating about one billion EUR of revenues. Our project is focusing on greater value for our customers, more business value, technological value.
And that's why we're targeting 60% of revenues generated from digital. So growth project, organic growth, external growth, but controlled growth and targeted growth, which will accelerate the group's positioning, but also support the group's growth for the next four or five years. So a more effective plan. We've mentioned this 10%, which is now going to be the lower limit for 2028. So operating margin between 10% and 11%. Capital allocation, obviously, you've understood it's going to be balanced out between shareholder return and then investment in our model in development of the company. So it's a great project. We're very confident with regards to the company's ability to deliver this project because we've got solid fundamentals. The group's values are there. The ambition, we've got serious ambition. And we're legitimate.
And it's based on transformation levers, which have been presented in detail by Dominique. These are pragmatic levers, which have already been activated. They're impacting the company's organization in depth, the way it sells, the way it delivers. These are levers that are going to be implemented progressively in a secure manner across Sopra Steria. Very confident. We've got the team. We've got Pierre Pasquier, Sopra GMT, the board, who is very much committed alongside us, supporting us. Over 52,000 employees who will play their role.
They will contribute to delivering this project. That's my conclusion. I think now it's time to move on to the Q&A session. We'll have questions from the audience. We've already got hands up. I'd like to suggest that we have one question per person. Then obviously, we can have follow-ups. Microphones are available. They'll be handed out. Let's open up this Q&A session.
Hello. Hello, Cyril. Thank you for this presentation. I'm Thomas Baudry, HSBC. Is it possible perhaps to reconcile the optimistic vision, the ambition that you have in 2028, plus the 2028 target, and the lower part of the bracket that you target that is your growth is 2% each year and the margin 10% each year? That means stability.
So you're talking about ramp-up, industrialization, synergies, acquisitions. So it's better for me to understand the bottom part of the bracket in your guidance and the scenario that you're thinking about in the lower part of your guidance. You know us well. You know us well. We know each other. We're quite pragmatic and realistic when we look at things. Now, let's have a look at the lower part of our guidance bracket. As Étienne said, EUR 7 billion is what we target. It's the floor.
We didn't say more or less. We said more than 7 billion. 7 billion. Well, that means a total growth of 6% annually. If you look at our track record, it does make sense. And then if we look at organic growth from 2% to 5%, well, the thing that's important is that this factors in a number of uncertainties. That is, the speed at which the market will take off again, will rebound. Of course, the market is the way it is at present. And in 2025, that's what the market's going to look like. Of course, there's going to be a rebound on the market, but we don't really know when. Is it going to be H2 2025? Is it going to be H1 2026? At which speed? We don't really know. So we've included this uncertainty.
And yet, we intend to grow despite all of these headwinds. Now, if we look at the lower part of the bracket and if we look at the operating margin, what can I say about this? Here again, this is a floor in, more or less. We like having a floor at Sopra Steria. It's a floor. We're saying 10%. What does that mean, the 10%? Well, this is, in fact, the minimum commitment that we want to have on all of our geographies, all of our countries, but also all the business lines so that we can meet the 10% and secure the 10%. The second thing that you have to remember, and by the way, I could make a comparison with the other activities in the world or sports, for instance.
It's all very nice to hit the 10% target, which is what's going to happen this year. This is what we said we would do, and we'll deliver on that. That's the commitment we took three years ago, and it's a different thing if you structure the performance that you want to attain. That is, regardless of the conditions, we'll be able to have a two-digit operating margin despite the headwinds. So the phase we've gone through was a catch-up phase compared to the position we should have had given the European ambition we have, and at present, we are focusing on our margin, a margin that will be a two-digit margin that's going to last for a couple of years. Another question, please.
Yes. Grégory Ramirez. And I'm with GR20 Research. I'd like to talk about solutions. Now, you have sold SBS, so the main assets. Today, there are three activities left. And in the midterm, it's not in the 2028 plan. It seems that you have no project in terms of disposing of those. But what about the midterm? Sopra HR Software is very much a French business line. In addition to this, this includes payroll outsourcing. And will this stay, or will you dispose of the business? Should it still be in the Sopra Steria culture, given the business model that you have today?
Now, that's a question that we asked ourselves in-house when we decided to dispose of Sopra Banking Software, SBS, because we thought, "Okay, there's software business there. That'll not stay in the group." You see, it's difficult to have two different business models in one given company. And then we had the solutions activities that we wanted to keep. What's the difference?
These solutions activities generate more professional services than the software activities that are moving towards the subscription model. That is the main difference between the two business lines. Now, why does Sopra HR have a role to play, and that's going to last in the company. Let me tell you a story. I like these anecdotes to illustrate what I'm saying. We won the Source Solde program not that many years ago. The objective was to replace the very famous Louvois, so what we told the government is that we had a sovereign solution, a French solution, a Sopra Steria solution with all of the business lines. The Sopra HR products, payroll, were a benchmark on the market, plus consulting because they knew how to frame the program and monitor it, systems integrations, and also the possibility to operate and to secure this with digital trust.
Who were the competitors? Well, you know the big names, big global players, and had a German type of solution. See what I mean? And at the end of the day, we managed to stand out because we are one company and we committed. We took the global commitment on the basis of French products and solutions. We deployed the program. Now, this is good news because it's working. If nobody talks about it, it's because it works. And we've seen that with other clients, Sopra HR and Sopra Steria, Thales, the French railways, SNCF, and Orange, the telco company. We target these objectives. And therefore, there's a direct link between solutions and digital services and consulting activities. They will continue and work together at Sopra Steria.
Hello, Cyril. Laurent Daure, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question about consulting. There are two parts to it. I was looking at your slides. Your revenue for 2024 is higher than 2023. I thought that the H1 had a decrease, a sharp decrease, and recent brands, you're attractive for the young consultants compared to Cap or Accenture. I'd say the same about the clients, given the contracts that you've won. Is it because you're a bit less expensive than others, or is it because your approach is different?
I'll start, and then Fabrice will pick on what I'm going to say. I'll start. Now, the figure that we've given you is total growth, which includes the acquisitions that were made, Ordina, and others. Now, if we look at organic growth, that's true. There's a decrease. There was a decrease during H1 to the tune of 5%, more or less. We think that for H2, the decrease will be twice as less as this one, 2.5%.
So that's for the numbers. So that was total growth that we were talking about, that is including acquisitions. Now, to answer your second question, how appealing is the brand? Could you perhaps tell us more on that? Well, it all depends who we're looking at. Now, we are attractive because we have the Sopra Steria image. It's a very good tech company in Europe. Well, in France, of course, it is, but also elsewhere. And I think that we are attractive because if you're a young engineer or a fresh out from a business school, you will look at consulting in a tech-native environment. I think that the consulting firms that don't focus on technology are not very much modern, are they? And then to answer your question, what do customers think about us compared with Capgemini or Accenture?
As I said in my presentation, we stand out because we use the assets that we have in Sopra Steria, and we work on IT with our customers and hand in hand with our customers. It's not the case for others. They're not that close to their customers. So in consulting, we use the fact that we work closely with our customers. We work on their IT and IS and their existing processes. And therefore, we can give them insights, and we're closer to the reality of their operations with their teams. We're successful in consulting because unlike a toolbox, I hope that I have the right tools for my customers so that they can do what they want to do.
The only thing that matters is to deploy and make sure that new services are adopted and they're based on technology that their workforce is going to use and their clients as well. This is our claim. This is our promise. You're totally right when you're saying that we have to talk more about this. We have to advertise this because we need to conquer new customers. Before we look for customers outside, we need to focus on these 12% or more than 12% with all the priority customers that we have to reach 12%, then 15%, and then we'll see if other customers outside will be interested. I think you asked a question about our selling prices, our sales prices. This is something important, of course.
And that's why we've put together all of our consultants in this consulting company so that we can better monitor the sales price. Not just the sales price, but the sales price is important. So we can track the sales prices that we have. These prices will have to increase annually. And if the market is tough, we'll target 3%-5%. If the market's okay, we'll target more than 5% because this is the value we bring to our customers. This is what we're worth. And we'll have to do this in a lasting way. Customers would know if it were that easy to increase prices by 20%. So we'll do this over the long run. So who are we going to sell to if we are more expensive than people who would be differently sensitive to prices? And it all depends.
Also, are you selling business services, or are you selling a full offer or service because you take the risk? You know that you'll be able to deploy the projects more quickly. Now, let me give you a number to finish on this, a number that I like that has to do with consulting in France, which is our flagship. Several years ago, it was at EUR 650, quite low. This year, it's EUR 850. And our target is to aim for EUR 1,000. So this is what we've done, and this is what we still have to do, from EUR 850 to EUR 1,000. Thank you. Yes. Hello, Cyril. Hello, everybody. Thomas Poutrieux, BNP Paribas Exane. And what about your margin objectives, which is 10% or 11% by 2028?
Have you included in this margin objective the possible dilutive impact of M&A depending on the timing of your acquisitions between 2025 and 2028? If it's the case, could you perhaps give us more color on that? Yes, we've taken this into account, but Étienne will join me, and Étienne will answer that. Yeah. If you look at what we buy, we'll try and buy something that's not far away from the standard margin objectives we have, and then this will have an impact on M&As at the end of the period. If you buy at the end of 31st of December, it's going to be different from buying at another moment in the year, but we have a timeline. You know what we said about CS and Benelux? Three years is the timeline. Three years. It was a low point that we started with at CS.
It's not going to be the case sometimes, and we want to buy companies that have normative margins that are not far away from our margin, so three years is the maximum, I'd say, so yes, at the end of the period, there'll be a slight dilutive effect, possibly. Emmanuel Parot, Gilbert Dupont. Yes. A question about offshoring. I think that's something you brushed upon. How many people? 7,000 people, 13% of total headcount. Now, okay. What about your 2028 plan? What about these percentages? Will they go up, or will they be stable percentages? And which country are you going to focus on? Well, if we look at offshore, the offshore business, at present, it's more or less 15% of the workforce. The objective is to increase this percentage. Of course, we'll do that, but in a very pragmatic way.
We don't want to change our clients, do we? So we work for the Ministry of French Armies, the Ministry of Interior for some key customers, large customers who accept to work at home, if I can say, or in our premises in France. It's the same in the UK for the UK customers or in Germany for the German customers. And offshore, we'll go from 15% to 20%. That is the objective. Now, where? I think that's your second question. Well, I'd say we'll target industrial sectors, aeronautics. There's still something we can do in this area, aeronautics. And connected to this, manufacturing. We have a foothold there, so we could do this. We could increase the percentage there. But also in the banking sector, there's development potential with the banking sector. Then back to the geographies, I'd like to mention France and the UK, of course, but also Germany, Benelux, and Scandinavia.
Nicolas David, Oddo BHF. So I've got a question on free cash flow, perhaps more for Étienne. Why are we keeping free cash flow over revenue at 5%-7% when operating margins are above 10%? Obviously, that's the lower end of the range. Have you got some information on CapEx or cash tax that we need to bear in mind for the coming years? Or is this already taking into account variability in working cap? So for tax, there's some uncertainty given the situation in Europe and in France in particular, but this is obviously not a major factor either. So yes, there is a variability in working cap. It can swing from one side to the other at the end of the year. It depends on customer behavior as well, public-private sector. So it's taken into account this range.
I've got to address the elephant in the room, 2025. You left that intentionally out, and we are all aware that most of the industry has no clue what's going to happen next year. Nevertheless, you have a lot of long-term contracts, and you mentioned in your nine-month call that you expect the drawdown at Airbus to flatten out at the end of the year. But does this still mean we could also go for a decline in 2025? Should I be?
So for Airbus, yes, we confirmed during our call a month ago, during our Q3 call, that today we consider with Airbus, we're at the low point of our business in Q4 for this year. So henceforth, our quarters should be at EUR 100 million, and we'll be starting 2025 with the visibility that we have, good level of confidence. We've renewed our framework agreements for the next five years. So that's obviously recent information. We knew that a couple of weeks ago, but that gives us confidence for the future. And we're considered as a strategic partner for Airbus. So yes, we consider that we're going to start 2025 with this low point, so EUR 100 million per quarter. And then we'll see throughout the year when Airbus ramps up its framework.
We'll see what happens then. So let's start with the follow-up questions. Laurent? So a few follow-up questions indeed. So I'd like to come back to some questions that have already been asked. So on free cash flow, if we take 5% in 2028, that's equivalent to what you've had this year, so EUR 350 million. I find that a little bit shocking, but I would be interested in having the free cash flow with constant WCR. Are we talking about 6.5%-7% if we've got a change in working capital requirement? Is that going to be stable? And then the other question I have is on organic growth. So obviously, I appreciate the fact that you're being cautious, but in previous years, when market conditions were satisfactory, Sopra Steria was aiming for 4%-6%.
So I'd be interested in knowing, okay, when the market comes back, can we aim for 4%-6%, or has something changed in the group structure which would stop us hitting this level? And then I've got a last question. We haven't spoken about the U.K. What about the platforms up until 2028? What will they look like in 2028, so that's a big follow-up question. I'll take organic growth. Give Étienne time to come up and join me, so when we look at the group's track record over the past 20 years, it's 6% organic growth, so above the market, we had announced on a nominal market 4%-6%, so we're at the upper end of the range of what we're announcing today, so I am confirming nothing has changed. We've got the same trends, 2%-5% on average throughout the term.
Perhaps 2026 will be the lower end of the range, and then in 2027, we'll hit the higher end of the range. So our fundamentals, which have meant that the company was capable of generating organic growth, they still exist. We think with the digital business positioning, there is no reason why we can't be above the market rate as we were in the past. Now, with regards to cash linked to the previous question, so 1% of EUR 6 billion is EUR 6 million, EUR 60 million. We'll obviously look at what we've got at the end of the year depending on customer behavior, depending on advance payments. These are things that are decided on depending on cash flow management at our customers. We've seen rates are up as well.
Now, for the past couple of years, you've seen that change in behavior as well. We've got public administrations which are a lot more cautious as well. Certain people, countries in Europe. We'll see what we collect by the end of the year. N They've obviously got their covenants to manage as well, their banking covenants to manage. So 7%, 7 times 49, so EUR 350 million. And we said would be above EUR 7 billion in revenue. So you can follow my logic. Now, for the platform business in the U.K., this is a business that we have in the U.K., and this is not something that can be reproduced elsewhere other than in the U.K. So this market is obviously going to evolve. It's going to move from being a market with big, heavy contracts to a market where we'll see perhaps slightly smaller contracts which have been separated with strong competition, especially given the impact of generative AI.
So obviously, we've integrated this for a long time now. AI on our BPS platforms is something we've been doing for seven, eight years now. Mohammed mentioned this. So we're not running late. We're ahead of the game. We're seeing the tenders that are underway. We're already engaging all this expertise that we have in AI technology so that we can price this BPS business. So that's what I can say about the market. It is the benchmark business for the U.K. It's a mature business, and it's a business which is quite specific because basically it requires transformations. Every time we create a new platform, we invest. We invest in the platform, and then the margin comes along afterwards with the increase in volumes. So today, we've got seven platforms which are live. So two, three platforms, it was difficult, not particularly robust.
And now we've got seven platforms, and we've got deals which are underway. We've got enough maturity to be able to say that our business is robust for the upcoming period. Furthermore, I often forget to say this. I'm not a money man, but this business has given us. We've provided GBP 1 billion worth of savings to the British administration. So, Nicolas David again from Oddo BHF, a follow-up. The first on consulting. What's the obligation that you have to stabilize business services consulting? Have you got an approach where you're thinking about value positioning or price, or perhaps you're not going to develop this, or are you going to take your resources elsewhere, or what are your obligations here?
And then the next question is on, no, I did have another question, says he. Oh, no, no. We'll start with the first question on consulting. Good question, says he. So business services means that we're very close to our customers. We're working with them constantly. So it's very important for that reason. But it is a business, as its name would indicate, that the added value is created by the customer. They decide what they're doing. They're the ones who steer what they do. So we don't have the same margins. If we had more responsibility in the way we support the transformations, that's why we want to stabilize this business so we keep this close relationship with our customers. Obviously, when you're consultants going to see their customers, you know what's going on.
You've got access to leaders, ideas, ideas which are not general theories, but ideas that are actually applied. But we do want to develop other activities with higher levels of pricing and profitability. That means we have more responsibility the way we manage, steer these transformations, think about the way we scope them, and the way we establish our priorities for them. And then the next question. There's no big changes in the environment in the midterm. Has this been taken into account in terms of your tariffs? Is there pressure on prices linking to development of agents linked to AI linked to this type of service? Yeah, we've taken this into account. We're also taking into account the fact that for three years now, we've started working on repositioning our prices because we consider that our prices weren't high enough when we compare them to the value that we're producing for our customers.
This stream is almost come to an end, but there is another workstream which we'll roll out. We're saying, "Okay, I'm positioning sales prices with regards to the value that I'm producing." But obviously, we're producing more values, and we need to reposition our prices. We're working on this. So obviously, it takes into account the fact that the sales price should continue to increase in the upcoming period. So we've spoken about this with consulting, with Sopra Steria, but also this applies to all of the group's business lines. Hello. We've got Emmanuel Parot. So market intelligence profile focusing on digital sustainability. You've spoken about changes, services, offers, and changes in strategy with regards to marketing, go-to-market. So what is the strategy? I haven't seen it appear because obviously, this might require other support in terms of operations and business.
And then perhaps this can help differentiate your assets, which are valued. So obviously, sustainability, that was presented. Yes, you're right. So this is something that we've been working on for a while now, and it's Sopra Steria marketing our offer. It's all very well and good having offer, but you need to accelerate their go-to-market.
We've got teams in charge of this. We've started. We've taken the benchmark of software because obviously, software is an industry in itself. It's got their products, their customers, and the way they work. So we've looked at this expertise, this marketing expertise that we have in software, and we drew on this to launch a marketing organization supporting our offshore. So we've been working on that for a year. So we're at the start of the story now, but obviously, there's a strong marketing commitment alongside our offerings. And then perhaps on sustainability, Axelle, if you just want to add to that, say a couple of words. So I'll do that quickly with regards to the offers that we've developed quickly. Recently, we've got six, and one of them is entirely focused on sustainability, so responsible digital.
So we're thinking about this upstream, so right from design and then reasonable choices. Then when we talk about reasonable digital, we're thinking about environmental, but also social challenges as well. And we're convinced that digital accessibility is a potential vector for development, for commercial development, because when we talk about accessibility, we're not just talking about the 7% of people with a disability, but we're talking about society, demographics, which are aging. We're thinking about the market as well, which so this exceeds this population as well. So we've already developed an offering which is being tested with our customers. And I can give you a specific example. So I was talking about steering tools at group scale, and that's something that's been integrated by our teams. So we've got a skills center dedicated to integrations of a tool that's provided by a technological partner.
We've organized this transfer of expertise. We've taken the lessons learned from integrating these tools, and we've passed this on to our business teams so that with a range of technological partners, our teams can both do consulting integration for ESG data, and then also managing, steering things at scale for our customers. That's just one example, but we do intend to be offensive on this market segment. Derek from Bernstein. I've got a few questions now. The first is on the weight of next-gen. 60% is the target for 2028. What is the current figure? My second question on the weighting of France. When we look at the 60/40 distribution, it looks like France is growing slower than the rest of the group. What is the organic growth trajectory for France 2026 to 2028? Yeah, 2026 to 2028.
Then my third question is on distribution of your build activity. What is the weighting between systems integration where you integrate packaged offers? You've spoken about a few software houses, but not that many. Salesforce, etc. What is the weight of T&M and then application management? What of these three businesses? What does it look like in 2028? What will be the weight of these three activities? That's a big follow-up. I'll try not to forget all of your questions. For the weight of digital, the starting point is 50%. We're moving from around 50% to 60% known for growth in France. We've got similar growth to group growth. There's no real difference here with regards to their growth rates. Yes. We want to rebalance our geographical mix. These EUR 1 billion acquisitions won't be mainly in France.
60% is going to be outside of France. So that obviously has an impact on organic growth. And Cyril has answered that, is it, about group level. And then for systems integration. So this very much depends on the geographical market. If we take France, Sopra Steria is 30% T&M, and then the rest is application management. If we take other countries, say, for example, the Netherlands or Germany, it's a time and materials market. So obviously, at an overall level, at group level, there are disparities. So France, 30% T&M, and then the rest is fixed package. Obviously, we're developing, maintaining our customers' application legacy. So we're well positioned to transform them, adding cloud, adding a layer of AI to export data, etc. So we're proactively triggering.
We've got our teams who are working on our existing positions, see what they can offer our customers to transform their information systems. And then obviously, we're a serious integrator. We integrate market products from SAP, ServiceNow, Salesforce, but also we can talk about the others, niche products. So we've got about 30 products that we're specialized in in terms of integration. Stéphane Tumache, LBO France. Two questions. The first, I haven't heard you speak about USA. Can you be a credible stakeholder without having a presence in the USA? Other people say no, so why would it be different to you? And then second question, this EUR 1 billion for M&A, so that's three years of free cash flow. That seems to be very cautious. Are you not capable of integrating bigger targets? How do you see things?
So for the USA, obviously, for the upcoming period, we said that with the customer base that we have, there's no need to roll out a strong positioning in the U.S. or in North America. This doesn't mean that we don't have people there. We've got 150 people at CS working in Canada for Pratt & Whitney. So it does exist. So sometimes for Airbus, when we need to support them in the U.S., we're capable of doing that. But in terms of strategy, with the customer base that we have, quite clearly, we don't have any need or there's no demand to develop a strong presence in the U.S. So perhaps for industrial players or pharmacy stakeholders, if we're working in that domain, I wouldn't be saying that, but we're not in that sector. So I think we have to be quite clear in terms of our strategy.
We've made our choices. We assume our choices. And I think we're doing everything we need to to position Sopra Steria well in Europe. Now, your second question, Étienne. Yes. So the amount allocated to free cash flow, this EUR 1 billion, it's not a question of financial capacity. We could have a higher leverage ratio, but we don't want to make acquisitions that are too big or big ones like we have done in the past. It gives you an idea of what we're capable to do with this EUR 100 million. So we want to make mid-size acquisitions. It's not a financial limitation. It's a question of facility to execute and thinking about the accessible targets as well. And then I would add that you know us. We've got quite a pragmatic approach. Often you challenge us on 2024. Are you going to accelerate M&A in 2024? Well, no.
In 2024, we integrated Tobania, CS, and Ordina at the same time. So the priority wasn't to chase after targets. We wanted to secure the acquisition of companies already acquired. Étienne has talked about this. We're heading in the right direction. We're quite satisfied with what we've done up until now, even if obviously we haven't finished everything, but we're satisfied with what we've done. And we have the willingness to secure the choices we've already made, secure integrations, and make sure that the value promised would actually be delivered.
A very final question about your organic growth assumption between 2% and 7%. What's the assumption you've taken in terms of prices, given the fact that you want to increase your prices? I'm not going to give you all the details of our analytical model, but what I told you is that all in all, if we look at prices, if we look at volumes, if we look at the positions taken on the market, and if we take into account also uncertainties, you're talking about certainties, but let's talk about uncertainties. We know the uncertainties. So despite the uncertainties, we can deliver. We can deliver this growth with a minimum of 2%. And if the market is back to a normal situation, we'll be reaching the upper part of the bracket, which has always been the case. This is our positioning. Hello, Dominique Lapère, and I've got a question about your offshore business.
Will you help your customers with cost decreases, or will you do what Capgemini did several years ago? They had a special BU, an offshore BU, to address new markets. Will you support your customers, or will you have an offer that would be a purely offshore offer to help the new customers? Will we do offshoring for our own customers? We don't do this to gain new customers. It would be difficult. It's always difficult to knock on the doors of new customers. It's offshoring for the customers who know us, who trust us. That's number one. Number two, we don't do offshore only to decrease costs. Of course, it's going to help you decrease costs, but we are in offshoring because we have very strong digital experts in India and have the skills. So if you look at the market, the potential for development is really strong in the field of digital. Now, India is a center of expertise.
They have the capacity, and therefore we're not limited in terms of gaining market share, limited with our European resources we have in Europe. That's what we do in offshore. HSBC Thomas Baudry. I have a question about the size of the group. Now, your 2028 project is to remain independent. The market is fragmented. I'd like to know something. Wouldn't you say that size is what matters if we look at how you can invest massively and strongly in innovations, new technologies like artificial intelligence? When we look at Accenture and the amounts they've earmarked for investments, wouldn't you say that size is something that really is important? Well, listen, if we had 1 or 2 billion in revenues with a European project, I'd say, yeah, you're right. You're right. Size would be something important.
But today, if you look at our positioning today, if you look at the investments that you already make today, and if you look at our objectives, given the customer base that we address today, we work with them daily, we would say no. We consider that no, we have the critical size today. We can invest. And this is what Dominique presented as well as Mohammed. We consider that we're not late. And as far as AI is concerned, there's nothing to be ashamed of. If you look at Capgemini or Accenture, they talk a lot about what they do. That's true. We don't talk enough about what we do. I agree with you. Now, Cyril, Numeum, this week met, and they took stock of 2024, and they focused on their forecast for 2025. And they described a market in 2024 that was quite surprising.
They were saying customers have bigger budgets. The amounts allocated to software companies or ES is increasing, but the ones who suffer are the consulting firms or tech consulting firms. Now, there's a decorrelation we've not seen in the past 20 years. That is, the IT budgets that are going up and the way they allocate the budget to two groups of companies that usually in the past would work together. Of course, I read the Numeum report. I read it yesterday, by the way, and I'd say, no, what are they saying? They're saying that the gap that existed before between software growth, platform growth, and service growth is the same, but everybody's gone down a level in 2024. They're saying that the software company, that's flat, 0.7. That's what they're saying. And they're saying that software and platforms is a bit above that.
But if I look at the gap between those two, it's more or less the same gap that we had before. I was not really surprised, you see. And they're saying as well that there's strong growth for the cloud business, AI, and cybersecurity. So I looked at the report, and I thought, yeah, this is it. This is where we are. And the gap that we have here is the one that existed before. So I was not really surprised in any way. We'll take a very final question. Yes. BNP Paribas Exane, two follow-up questions. The offshore business, as you said, offshore could increase in your business mix. Is this going to be done through M&A, or do you have enough capacity? You were talking about India and your recruitment lever to increase this mix organically.
And then, before we talk about the organic underlying assumptions, 2%-6%, about aerospace. What do you expect from aerospace? Is it going to be below or above these group-set objectives? As far as offshore is concerned, we'd say that given the objectives that we've set, we don't need any M&A. As Étienne said before, M&A is going to be used to accelerate our positioning. That's all. But given our objective, we can grow organically, which is what we've done so far. No problem. Then, as far as the aeronautics business is concerned, well, listen up. We have Airbus, which in the past 18 months has decreased its business. So we started at a low point at the beginning of the year. So we trust there's going to be a rebound during the second half, but there's uncertainty.
But we trust that we can do something good at the beginning of 2025 because the ramp-down is past, and then we work for other big companies, not just Airbus. They're not all in the Airbus value chain. There's Safran. That's true. They're in their value chain, but we also work for Dassault, so if you look at Safran, Dassault, and also Thales, we're growing there and we'll continue to grow. We'll grow next year, so Airbus was going down, but this was offset given the fact that we work with other players in the same industry. Well, thank you very much for being with us this morning. The capital markets day is coming to its end. Now, the team is with me. I'm very happy that we could organize this, that we could share the Sopra Steria ambition and our project.
Have a nice day, nice week, and we'll meet again soon. Thank you.